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Sunday, 13 July 2014

Made: Letterpress & linocuts

When I picked up a flyer for a very decently-priced letterpress workshop run by Nick Birchall, the man behind Cleeve Press, I was immediately interested. And when I told Laura of Make, Do & Mend about it, she jumped at the chance of a trip to Leicester to learn some new skills.

Letterpress looks deceptively simple. Surely you just pick out some letters and start printing, right? Mmm, not so much. Did you know that a two hundred years ago, the apprentice period for a printer was seven years?! Even now it's a not-to-be-sniffed-at three years. The workshop - which covered everything from the history of printing, to making linocut blocks to print from, to how to 'lock' your frames for printing - gave me a whole new respect for anyone who works with letterpress. This is a slow and painstaking process, and not one I was awfully good at. I tend to fall down on anything arty: I'm a words person (which is why letterpress appealed in the first place), so my attempt at linocutting, an open book to accompany the Smiths lyrics I wanted to print, wasn't terribly impressive.

By the time I'd cut my lino, assembled my letters, blocked out the frame to lock the letters in place, inked up and made ready to start printing, about four hours had passed in the blink of an eye. It left me with a just a bit of time at the end to put together a text-only print of the Tolkein line, "Not all who wander are lost," which I've already framed to put on the living room wall.

All in all, the workshop was really rewarding and enjoyable, and I left buzzing with ideas to utilise should I ever be let loose on a printing press again.

My inked-up block in the press ready to print...

...and the final product (after four tries: getting the ink on and even is harder than it looks!)

Oh this is great! Stationery is a big love of mine and I am really interested in letterpress. Despite knowing next to nothing about it, I once flirted with the idea of going into it (read: maybe, possibly starting a business). But you're right, it's really difficult and an art; I also have a lot of respect for letterpressers (I made that little up). Glad to hear it's already framed and ready to go on the wall.